Dancer of Illusions
by Will Peterson
Summary: Psychic beauties are not always what they appear. Having just discovered some startling information, an enamored, disturbed trainer watches his Gardevoir and wonders what kind of dark secrets she may hide beneath her seeming loveliness.


_As always, thank you for reading._

 **Dancer of Illusions**

Kirlia spend their lives dancing. It's as if music is always playing inside their heads, compelling them to equal the imaginary song's loveliness with their own movements. They never walk if they can skip or hop instead. If told to stand in place, they'll still tap their feet on the ground in a perfect rhythm. Even in battle, they perform their attacks with pirouettes and flourishes.

There are many Kirlia who lose their love of dance when they evolve, but not mine. To this day, my Gardevoir cannot hold still any more than when she was a Kirlia. And oh, just as much as she loves to dance, I love to watch her.

My village is holding a festival today. Stands of food and games line the streets and the air is filled with the warm mixed scents of celebration. In one spot there's a band of musicians playing lively songs. A crowd of both people and Pokémon has gathered before them to move to their music.

I don't care for dancing myself, so I've found a place to sit on a stray wooden crate a little distance away. Among the whole crowd of merry dancers, my eyes exist only for my Gardevoir. She's the only thing in that crowd worth looking at, in all honesty. She is bursting with joy like the rest of them, but it doesn't detract from her elegance. Most of the revelers around her are just flailing, bouncing erratically. Her skilled dance appears fluid as water and smooth as glass.

My gaze follows the lines of her body. Her arms, full of grace, seem to float on clouds. Her skirt swirls around her, revealing glimpses of her legs that catch my eyes like magnets. I can't quite make out her smile from this distance, but I can easily imagine it. In these moments, I feel as though the ocean has swallowed me up and washed the surface of me away, remaking my role so that I am no longer a man, but merely a bundle of feelings and impressions. My whole world is my field of vision – a world that blazes with color – and Gardevoir is the center of focus.

Is it strange for a trainer to be so attentive to his Pokémon's physicality?

The question pokes into my mind, unbidden, and it drags me back to an uncomfortable self-awareness. Abruptly, I am no longer a ray of sunlight, a pure beam of simple happiness. I am me again and I can feel myself sitting in my own body, which means I must bear with the consequences of who I am. And what I feel.

The actual sunlight shines into my eyes as I try to refocus my gaze on her. My hand comes up to shield my eyes, and then my face is in shadow while she remains in sunlight. She's still dancing. Still gorgeous. I'm not in love with her, I think. I just like the way she looks.

Surely I'm not the only one who notices things like this. We humans live so closely with Pokémon, and some of them are awfully pretty. There must be other people who are like me, or perhaps even worse than me. Perhaps there are some people who have truly fallen for their Pokémon. No human would ever confess to such a desire, of course – there's too much of a societal taboo. But even if nobody talks about it, I'm willing to bet that those people exist somewhere in the world, reveling in the creatures' beauty while stewing in their own secret love.

Love. Beauty. Is any of it even real?

My hand itches toward my bag, but I stop it. What would be the point? I don't need any more confirmations. I already know how Spiritomb will react to the sight of Gardevoir there. Without seeking reminders, without looking at him or even his Poké Ball, I can picture his love struck grin clearly in my memory.

I discovered it recently. Once I did, I wondered how it had ever taken me so long to notice. They've been so open with the way they look at each other, warmth passing almost tangibly between their eyes. When they speak, their heads huddle close together, as if they're in a little club all by themselves. They transform around each other. Gardevoir is always radiant, but when she's near him, she seems to shine a bit more. Spiritomb, too, lets out a smile filled with a hundred kinds of happiness. Even the blind who cannot see them could probably sense the emotions emanating from them.

I'm still in disbelief over it, even though I shouldn't be. They're more alike than their appearances would suggest. My own research has told me this.

When I first realized that my Spiritomb and Gardevoir were attracted to each other, I found it so absurd that I just had to look into it. I had already known before that Spiritomb is in the Amorphous egg group, also sometimes called the Indeterminate egg group. What I didn't know until hitting the books is that the Gardevoir line is in that group as well. Ralts, Kirlia, and their evolutions are there, along with not just Spiritomb but also gaseous blobs like Gastly, lumps of lava like Slugma, piles of sludge like Grimer and Swalot . . . Why? I couldn't understand it. Why is Gardevoir, an entity of such obvious light and beauty, able to be with a nebulously-shaped creature of darkness?

This is not to say that my Spiritomb is a bad guy. He's not. He has been on my team and served us well for long enough to prove this. Legend has it that Spiritomb are collections of misbehaving spirits that were imprisoned up to five hundred years ago for their misdeeds. Well, I don't know what my Spiritomb did five centuries ago, or even if these legends are true in the first place, but I do know for sure that he is not evil right now.

Really, I don't think any Pokémon is evil, but I can't deny that some are stranger or more mischievous than others. I can't deny the way that he comes alive with energy during the darkest nights, or his fondness for sneaking up behind others and screeching just so he can laugh at their astonished reactions, or his fascination that makes him unable to look away whenever he sees an act of malice, or the fact that his body is nothing more than a swirling fog projected out of an odd stone.

I wonder what attracted her to him.

Then again, what attracted _me_ to _her?_ At least she and Spiritomb are biologically compatible. I have no leg to stand on.

The bright sunlight is getting the better of me, so I look away from the dancing crowd. I wasn't really paying attention anyway, wrapped up in my thoughts as I was. I stare down at my hands in my lap, and although a heaviness has settled in my heart, I continue thinking of her.

I always imagine her in the world of light, far removed from Spiritomb's darkness, but deep in the back of my mind I already know that this is probably not accurate. It's just that it's so tough for me to face the implications of her sharing an egg group with the bizarre and formless and sinister. It's so tough for me to admit that her beauty which enamors me might actually be a deception.

When it comes to the abilities of the Ralts family, people usually discuss the way they sense emotions. Ralts won't approach anyone who carries a whiff of hostility, Kirlia grow better when they're exposed to positive feelings, so forth. But something less known, something less talked-about, is that like any true psychic type, they also have illusory capabilities.

I picture Ralts, cute and innocent, then pretty Kirlia and dashing Gallade. I picture Gardevoir in general and then specifically my own. Could it be that these appearances, so beloved and popular amongst people, are not their true forms?

My hands ball into fists. Not angry. Just disturbed. I don't like the idea of deception. I don't like the idea of these seemingly lovely Pokémon hiding secrets beneath false beauty. Love, beauty, is any of it even real?

She appears in front of me so suddenly, she must have teleported. Gardevoir takes my hands in her own and gently uncurls them, making them flat, no longer fists. I look up at her and see a face full of concern. She must have sensed the troubled mood clouding over my mind.

I don't want her to worry about me. I smile and tell her that everything is fine. Since she can sense my emotions, I will have to make myself feel happy for real in order to convince her, so I gaze at her intently and try to enjoy the sight of her dazzling beauty, the very same beauty that has brought me into this misery in the first place.

She has always been kind to me. No matter who or what she truly is, I have to acknowledge that. Isn't it commonly said that Gardevoir are extremely loyal to their trainers? I will focus on that. I will try my best to forget that she might be a creature of darkness disguised as one of light, and instead focus on the warmth and friendliness she has always displayed with me . . . though I admit that despite my efforts, from time to time my thoughts will probably still be dragged to disturbing places.

END


End file.
